How Reflex Makes Web Development Suck Less
- Founders
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Alek Petuskey
Nikhil Rao
Building web apps can feel like death by a thousand tiny papercuts: constant tweaks, endless Googling, and a never-ending cycle of debug-deploy-repeat. Alek Petuskey and Nikhil Rao are on a mission to make all that hurt less. Their platform lets devs build full-stack apps faster with AI. After starting with a natural language prompt to generate the initial app, users can iterate further in pure Python (using the custom-built Reflex framework to keep things simple). Like magic (with fewer rabbits).
Fly Machines Doing Their Thing
When Reflex users prototype their apps, they're spinning up sandboxes powered by Fly Machines. Reflex keeps a tidy queue of these Machines ready – suspended until needed and recycled once done. "We spin up Machines into a happy state, suspend them, and serve them instantly when needed," says co-founder Nikhil Rao. Simple and effective.
Infrastructure Without the Voodoo
Reflex tried other sandbox providers but ran into a world of pain, with variable, unpredictable results that were a massive headache to debug. By contrast, Fly Machines were refreshingly straightforward: Docker images, predictable Linux-based VMs, and no surprises.
Skip the DevOps, Just Build
Fly.io's built-in multi-region and auto-scaling capabilities freed Reflex from wrestling with the usual DevOps nightmares. Rao calls out Fly's ease-of-use specifically, "Fly already had a lot of the routing features we'd otherwise need to build ourselves, so it saved us a lot of development time." This let Reflex focus on their actual product, instead of getting buried under infrastructure hassles.
Scaling Like It's No Big Deal
Growth hasn't been painful either. Reflex uses Fly.io's Machines API to manage scale seamlessly. Need to spin up a hundred machines? Easy. Tear them back down? Just as straightforward. "Fly.io keeps improving," Rao explains. "It stays user-friendly whether you're running one machine or thousands."
Real Talk with Real People
Reflex appreciates Fly.io's human touch—support via a dedicated Slack channel, direct interactions with CEO Kurt, and genuinely responsive product development. "You all are extremely responsive, always good about feature requests, and excellent at solving issues", Rao reflects.
All of this lets Reflex can skip the infrastructure dread and stick to their main goal: building great tools for devs. Thanks to Fly.io, Reflex makes web development suck a little less every day.